Väisälänsaari, Finland

Wedging his nude body between two tall, thin birch trees, Arno Minkkinen merges with his surroundings. Though whimsical, the photograph also reflects the artist’s spiritual, bodily communion with the natural world.

Minkkinen recalls the experience of making this photograph on a small strip of land in his native Finland: “Sometimes the inspiration for making a photograph is best explained by its geography, which in this case was the shoelace-wide spit of land I had rowed out to, squeezed between two enormous lakes. Feel the squeeze. And I love birch trees; they’re the Dalmatians of the forest, only much better behaved.”